xvii, 278 pages ; 22 cm

How have the lyrics of poets and songwriters, traditionally voices of protest against domination and exploitation in Chinese society, responded to the forces of cultural imperialism and nationalistic ideology that have accompanied the modernization of Chinese society in the last half of this century? Gregory B. Lee suggests that the response can be seen in a proliferation of hybrid lyric forms and cultures - from both within China and beyond - and that China's "culture of lyricism" contributes in powerful, significant, and often resistant ways to the nation's sense of itself and its encounter with modernity

Lee's broad definition of lyric includes the work of poets, amateur versifiers, and all manner of popular songwriters, and his inclusive sense of nation refers to all Chinese communities regardless of geographic location. Whether examining the globalized consumption of satellite-broadcast pop music or the heroic efforts of little-known poets on the margins of the Chinese diaspora, he finds a questioning and contesting of both the Orientalist construction of a mythic monolithic China invented by the West and the Chinese obsession with ideas of authenticity and purity of nationhood. Lee explores the lyrical transgression of these ideological boundaries in China, in the Chinese communities of America and Britain, and in other marginalized communities, before using the examples of Hong Kong and other non-nationalistic sites to discuss the creative possibilities of hybrid cultures and societies

Includes bibliographical references and index

1. White Other, Hybrid Others -- 2. The Barriers of Routine and Habit: Poetry, Patriotism, Ideology -- 3. Chinese Modernism, Western Colonialism -- 4. Contempt for the Contemporary: Orientalists, Western Marxists and Chinese Poetry -- 5. Exile and the Potential of Modernism -- 6. Chinese Trumpeters, French Troubadours: Nationalist Ideology and the Culture of Popular Music -- 7. Fear of Drowning: Pure Nations, Hybrid Bodies, Excluded Cultures -- 8. Poetic Zones, Autonomous Moments

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